5
Flattening text
When Illustrator flattens text with transparency effects, it preserves the text as text objects, but clips and
masks it as necessary to create the effect. However, if the text is stroked, used as a clip, or contains a pattern
fill, Illustrator will convert it to outlines and treat each character as an individual vector object. (Illustrator
will also convert text to outlines if it is in a very complex region of the artwork and the Quality/Speed slider
in the Document Setup dialog box is at position 4 or lower.)
For example, if a transparent object overlaps a text object, Illustrator clips the portion of text that interacts
with the transparent region. By comparison, if text overlaps a transparent object filled with a hatch pattern,
Illustrator converts the text to outlines and treats it as vector objects, rather than clipping the text to each of
the hatch paths and creating a very large number of clipped text regions.
If Illustrator is unable to convert such text to outlines because the outline information is not available (e.g.,
it’s a bitmap font; a “partial” bitmap font; or a protected, outline-restricted font), Illustrator rasterizes the
text that intersects with transparent objects.
If strokes are converted to fills when Illustrator converts text to outlines, the fills will be wider than the origi-
nal text by 1 or 2 device pixels. This conversion may make text appear thicker on low-resolution output
devices, such as inkjet printers. To prevent the thicker strokes, do one of the following:
•Adjust the Quality/Speed slider to the right. When the slider is at position 5, for example, text won’t
appear thicker.
•Move the Quality/Speed slider to position 1 so that all the artwork, including the text, will be rasterized.
•Specify a higher value in the Rasterization Resolution field in the Printing & Export panel of the Docu-
ment Setup dialog box—600ppi or greater should give good results.
When you save a document that contains transparency as an Illustrator 9 EPS file, a native Illustrator 9 file,
or a PDF 1.4 file (Adobe Acrobat
®
5.0 format), the text remains text objects. However, If you save artwork
that contains transparency (including opacity, masks, or blend modes) to EPS 8.0, PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4.0x),
or AI 8.0 or earlier format, all the text will be converted to outlines or rasterized. To preserve the text
editability , you can save the file as an AI 9.0 EPS file and then use Acrobat Distiller to convert it to PDF 1.3
(Acrobat 4.0x) format. Alternatively, you can flatten the objects that are affected by transparency (assuming
text is not affected by transparency) before saving the file in PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4.0x) format or Illustrator 8.0
or earlier format.
Flattening complex artwork
Maintaining vector data when flattening an area that contains thousands of paths and intersections—as
would happen if a transparent object overlaps an object filled with a hatch pattern—requires creating thou-
sands of individual component pieces, some only the size of a single pixel. When the Quality/Speed slider is
at position 5, Illustrator will maintain the vector data, but when it is at any other position, Illustrator will
rasterize such a dense area.
160 paths 1312 paths 3212 paths
Converting artwork that includes
transparency effects from the
Illustrator 8.0 plug-in
Transparency effects you created in
Illustrator 8.0x using Hot Door's
Transparency plug-in are retained
when you open an Illustrator 8.0
document in Illustrator 9.0.
However, if you plan to create new
transparent objects in Illustrator 9.0,
remove the transparency that you
created with the plug-in and then
reapply transparency using the
Illustrator 9.0 Transparency palette.
To remove transparency that was
created with the plug-in,click Release
in the Transparency palette. (The
Release button will only appear if
Hot Door's Transparency plug-in
is installed.)
Figure 5
Here, a rectangle containing a transparent
pattern is rotated and duplicated, resulting
in a large number of discrete regions in the
flattened artwork. When the Quality/Speed
slider is at position 5, Illustrator may be able
to maintain the vector data; at all other
positions, Illustrator will rasterize the
artwork.